The Gieves staff locked in Buckingham Palace

At 7:30am this morning Andrew Brett and the other staff of Gieve & Hawkes's military department dressed 12 members of the Queen's bodyguard at Buckingham Palace.

The uniforms were carried over from No 1 Savile Row last night, via St James's Palace. The uniforms, pictured above and normally stored in the Gieves basement, are incredibly heavy, with lengths of gold braiding, metal shoulder plates and ornamental bags. They also have specific boots (by Maxwell) and plumed helmets. Each plume is two or three swan feathers, sewn end-to-end by hand.

Normally the Gieves staff would dress the bodyguard (The Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms) on Savile Row. Some of their number go out in uniform once or twice a month. But today security around the Royal Wedding makes this impossible. In fact, once he has dressed the bodyguard Andrew will be locked in the room all day, as the Palace is locked down. He will be let out in the evening when the guard return.

Let's hope there's a TV in there.

On a separate note, and to expand on the previous post on Gieves's refurb, it was interesting to see how archive pieces are influencing the bespoke models being put together by head cutter Kathryn Sargent and CEO John Durnin.

These include a double-breasted suit in a 6x3 mode, but with an easy roll to the middle button when the top is left undone. Its back is done in three pieces, like a frock coat, finishing in two inverted pleats (pointing in to the middle of the back). A single-breasted in the same line features square fronts and a central pleat in the back, which looks like a single vent until it opens. Both are work in progress, but they show interesting ideas. And I do think tailors benefit from having inspiration pieces like this  around.

The pieces are inspired by military uniforms now dug up and on display. Just as interesting, however, are new items that have been made using old patterns from the archive - Edward VIII's tails, for example, in midnight blue. Or a couple of extravagant navy overcoats with so many overlapping pieces that John and I had trouble working out which were decorative and which functional. Photos of all this to come.

John Kent and Stephen Lachter in US

John Kent and Stephen Lachter will be visiting New York in a couple of weeks - for John, the first US trip he has done. They will be at Affinia 50, 155 East 50th Street, from May 9 to 13 inclusive.

I am a big fan of John and Stephen, as previously reported in a post on their history together here. John holds the royal warrant for the Duke of Edinburgh and his cutting deserves comparison with the best.

John and Stephen can be contacted by email: kenthastelachter1@btconnect.com or stephenlachter@aol.com.

Dandify the dressing gown

The dressing gown has always been an item of clothing where man felt freer to experiment with cloth and pattern. It is no coincidence that full-length paisley, spots and primary colours find a home nowhere else in the wardrobe other than in a dressing gown.

Partly this was the result of the privacy of dressing, but then pyjamas were seen by fewer people and they did not reach such exuberant heights. Honour that tradition next time you're choosing between a plain navy gown and something silky and spotted.

The gentleman pictured here, on the cover of the May 1936 edition of Man and his Clothes, wears satin in broad blue, grey and cream stripes.

Long socks or no socks at all

The first question everyone asks about over-the-calf socks is: Are they not too hot? No, the difference in heat is pretty tiny for a couple of inches of wool/cotton/blend, and the difference in style is immeasurable. Shorter socks don’t stay up; they always fall down, they always bunch, and that is not a good look with a finely pressed suit in rather fine worsted.

On some days however, such as the past three in London, they are certainly too hot. Even fine cottons, even a silk mix, even a linen mix like the pair I recently bought from my friends at the Dandy Store. On those days, it is better to go with no socks at all.

Not, it should be noted, with the fine worsted. Bare ankles are not appropriate for business. But then, when conducting business one is usually in air conditioning and heat is less of an issue.

In every other circumstance, loafers and slip-ons work well without socks. It is advisable to change at some point during the day, to help with any odour. Suede is preferable to leather in a lace-up; unlined shoes are particularly comfortable. If you must, wear a slipper sock that sits inside the shoe. But make sure it remains hidden.

With cotton suits, with chinos, sockless slip-ons are stylish and surprisingly cool. A lot of blood runs near the surface of your ankles.

Prince of Wales at Henry Poole: Part 7

This week was the second, forward fitting for this Henry Poole suit. The shape at the back is much improved since Craig and Alex ripped it apart last time – a nice compromise between hiding the shape of my back and highlighting my seat with too sculpted a line. The shape through the waist is retained, however, by taking that excess cloth out of the foreparts.

Although the chest is cleaner than before, it still needs a little adjusting. You can see how it is catching under the arms on both sides. The chest will be taken in a little further and the shoulders picked up to remove this – indeed, Craig decided to increase the size of the shoulder pad slightly, something that does my sloping shoulders no harm at all.

We now have the pockets in and the Henry Poole burgundy lining, which matches the overcheck on the cloth. The right sleeve will be lengthened a half inch as well, after which we should be ready for a final fitting next week.

Next: Finished suit

Photography: Andy Barnham

Gieves & Hawkes becomes a destination

Yesterday was the grand opening of the new Gieves & Hawkes, after an extensive refurbishment and the inclusion of several friends of Permanent Style.

Tim Bent has his dedicated room at the front of the store, as well as some beautiful pieces scattered about the place. Unlike other stores that borrow antiques like this to give the appearance of longevity, Gieves has its own, grander traditions and has informed sales staff to tell you about the luggage (though rarely Tim himself - you have to journey down to SW3 for that). I fell in love with a Louis Vuitton travelling wardrobe, complete with branded wooden hangers. Unfortunately it is in the tens of thousands of pounds.

Round the corner is Deborah Carre and James Ducker's new bespoke workshop - the goldfish bowl, as they like to call it. While the glass frontage might make them feel like they're on display, it is the best place in London to watch bespoke shoemaking first hand.

And lastly there's Justin Fitzpatrick, the Shoe Snob, who now has his own cubby hole in which to work customer's shoes up to a military shine.

The rest of the store is a big improvement on the old Gieves, particularly the inclusion of archive military pieces at strategic points. It now feels like a destination for any tourist interested in British menswear.

Summer: White trousers, suede shoes, blouson

I’ve had a lot of questions over the past few weeks about summer clothes, which isn’t surprising given most of Europe has been running through unseasonably warm weather.

For me, the keys to casual summer style are white (or pale) trousers, brown suede shoes and a blouson – the off-duty jacket of choice.

White ducks or pale flannel trousers (grey or cream) look great when the sun is out, and really at no other time. As the Italian tradition teaches us, and the pictures here from Loro Piana demonstrate, brown suede is the best accompaniment to those trousers.

These suede shoes can range from dark Goodyear-welted models (I own and highly recommend the Edward Green Asquiths, in mink) to unlined, pale desert boots. A casual brown slip-on can also work without socks – though only with more casual trousers and suits. Pale Incotex chinos, for example, or a navy cotton suit.

As to the blouson, this recommendation is born out of a common mistake. Some men who buy tailoring revert to off-the-peg when it comes to summer, unlined jackets. It’s a mistake I’ve made myself more than once. Just because the jacket is in an unstructured hopsack does not mean it does not have to fit.

Commission a lightweight navy blazer from your tailor and, in the meantime, find a nice zip-up blouson in a fine wool or suede. Wear it with an open-necked blue oxford or a long-sleeved white polo shirt. Then add white trousers and brown suede.

More on summer jackets here: Unlined jackets.

A summer suit suggestion here: Inspirational lovat.

Prince of Wales at Henry Poole: Part 6

An awful lot of handwork goes into a pair of trousers at Henry Poole. Here we see a few examples of that work, with a particular focus on attaching the curtain – the strip of cloth that runs around the inside of the waistband.

Before we get to the trousers as we see them here, finisher Sian has already tacked up the bottoms of both legs with cross-stitches and sewn tape around the insides to help them to hang straight. She has also put in tacks at the top and bottom of the pockets to reinforce them, put prick stitches up the front of the fly, sewn on the side straps and stitched up the back seam. The last hand operation is to sew down either side of the inlay in the seat.

Then onto the curtain. The material is the same as the sleeve lining, in Poole’s house stripe. Two strips will be sewn all the way around the inside of the waistband: the first is a doubled-over strip that is attached half way down the waistband and will hang loosely below it on the inside of the trousers; the second is sewn onto the same line but folded up and stitched to the top of the band, covering the waistband itself and the seam attaching the lower strip.

Most of the way round, Sian sews three small stitches (about half a centimetre in length) and then back stitches on the third, to secure it. This is reduced to two stitches forward and one back on places that need extra strength, like the pleat in the curtain that is put in behind the darts on either side. When folding the material over to make the pleat, Sian is careful to match the Poole stripes (above). The lower strip of curtain is then attached to the pocket lining to keep the lining in place during wear.

Most impressive of the various hand operations is the final stitch along the top of the waistband, which requires an exact, one millimetre gap to be left so that no lining ever shows above the waistband from the outside. To achieve this Sian is constantly rolling the material between her fingers to get the tension, and thus the height, exactly right (shown above).

Below you can also see Edward Cooke, the trouser maker under whom Sian works, preparing the fly on a pair of summer trousers. He bastes down either side before sewing it down by machine.

Next week: Forward fitting

Photography: Andy Barnham

Silk and wine with your evening wear

The fair haired boy of the beach walk

Esquire, January 1935: "This is the semi-formal evening outfit that will be worn by the best-dressed men at Palm Beach this winter. It consists of a white shawl collar dinner jacket with dress trousers of black or midnight blue tropical worsted. The jacket is of lightweight washable material in the single-breasted model that finally won out over the double-breasted type in the preferences of Newport and Southampton men by the end of last summer.

"The soft shirt is of white silk with collar attached, worn with a black rep dress tie in the popular semi-butterfly shape. The hose are sheer black silk with a deep maroon clock, and the pumps are patent leather. The maroon silk foulard handkerchief in the breast pocket here replaces the omnipresent red carnation. A tan camel's hair topcoat and a sennit straw hat complement this outfit on cool evenings. A wine silk cummerbund is recommended here."

Unless you do vacation in the classic sunspots of North America, and go to a lot of dinner events, I can't recommend a white dinner jacket. But those going to this season's awards dinners should take note of the other aspects of the dinner ensemble, including wine-coloured accessories and use of silk.

Tweed Run 2011, in Huntsman shooting suit

It wasn't what this shooting suit was designed, cut or bought for, but it turns out the waistcoat and plus-fours are extremely practical for cycling. The plus-fours are high enough on the waist to cover the shirting at your back even when riding. And the suit is rather appropriate, given it was being worn at the annual Tweed Run - sponsored by Huntsman.

The Tweed Run has been going for three years now and raises money for the charity Bikes4Africa. It involves a 10-mile ride through London's busiest streets, including a saunter down Savile Row and a tea break in Lincoln's Inn Fields. There are penny farthings, impressive moustaches and an all-pervading atmosphere of British civility. 

It steps way over the line from style into costume. But there doesn't mean there weren't touches of flair in the shooting socks and action backs. Even Ewan McGregor's pattern matching was pretty good.

Photographs are, unsurprisingly, by the wonderful Andy Barnham. Sorry about the last one. He does seem to bring out the poser in me.

Shirt, Turnbull & Asser; cashmere tie, Kiton; bike, Condor Fratello with Brooks tape, saddle and saddle bag.

Prince of Wales at Henry Poole: Part 5

First fitting this week on the Prince of Wales double-breasted suit being made at Henry Poole - in the Poole house check with characteristic burgundy overcheck.

Craig Featherstone, who cut the suit, is joined here for the fitting by master cutter Alex Cooke. Both Alex and Craig like to take apart a basted fitting when they can, in order to get the balance right. They rip up the basting stitches and then re-pin it on the customer. This is much easier with two people, so that one person can hold the cloth while the other pins. The alternative is to chalk on the changes, re-cut and then see how it looks at the next fitting. Less fuss, but it can lead to needless fittings.

In my case Alex and Craig were keen to re-pin the back, where more room needed to be put into the small of my back. The foreparts will be taken in, to retain the shape at the waist.

We also ripped off the collar to get the lie of the lapel right and shortened the right sleeve by 3/8 of an inch.

Next - hand finishing on the trousers

Previous posts: the cloth, measuring, cutting and making.

Photography: Andy Barnham

Factory visit: Bill Amberg

Bill Amberg has recently moved to lovely new premises in Queen’s Park, north London. The landlord that owns most of the street apparently refuses to turn it into flats, renting the lot out to small businesses instead. This means that you wander past a little bar, a café specialising in cupcakes and several places where something large and clanking is being manufactured behind wooden doors. Of course, anywhere in London looks good when the sun’s shining.

Bill’s operation includes administration, the design of all prototypes and the manufacture of his interior decoration. While I was there two girls were carefully assembling a series of wall panels in grey leather, kneeling on the table and slicing strips to a very meticulous plan. (This commission work accounts for around half of the Bill Amberg business.)

Upstairs in the attic is where all the leather is stored, along with the bag prototypes and several archive pieces. Predictably, it was the leather rolls that caught my eye and we spent a while discussing rawhide and its permutations (an interest triggered by the rawhide suitcase seen on a factory visit here).

Rawhide is skin that has not been tanned. When the skin is removed from the animal, the fat and proteins between the fibres are removed, leaving raw collagen fibres. To make leather, something else must be put in between those fibres. Until 1913, it was vegetable tannins (which is where the word ‘tanning’ comes from): a mixture of local bark and other vegetation. This gave the leather a very natural feel, as well as a look that was specific to the country or region (oak bark tanning was the traditional English version). Since 1913 an increasing amount of tanning has been done with chromium sulfate.

With rawhide, you just have raw collagen fibres. This makes the skin harder, more durable and lighter. The amount of fat and protein that is left on varies between types of rawhide. At one end of the scale is a drum top – pictured at top – which is very crude and variegated. At the other end is parchment: by soaking the skin in hot water, stretching it on a rack and scraping it with a half-moon knife, more and more fat and protein can be removed until you get a clean, white surface that is suitable for writing.

In the middle of this scale is vellum, which is a traditional material for suitcases because it is so durable and light. Bill recently decorated a man’s dressing room in it.

Also pictured are eel skins (above), which are cheap and plentiful so despite being small can be panelled together in long rows. And a dragon hand-carved into leather – something another client asked for, except 10 times the size and in the middle of his floor.

Book review: Savile Row, the Master Tailors of British Bespoke

UPDATE: The current edition of Savile Row has been exhausted, but James informs me a second edition is coming out shortly.
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James Sherwood’s latest book has been out for a while, but I like to wait and review a book once I’ve actually read it. And it’s still available, indeed reduced from £45 to £36, on Amazon.

That hefty price tag is justified by sumptuous production. The Master Tailors is a real coffee table book – something that will have you poring over the weave detail on big, full-page prints. It makes you realise the weight of Cary Grant’s flannels, brings out the fineness of a pearl-stitch buttonhole and allows you to appreciate the spray-on tightness of Prince Eddy’s full dress uniform. Even without buying the book its scale of illustration should be obvious from the flannel greatcoat on the cover with its black, silk-covered buttons.

But this should not be mistaken for a contemporary book, or a practical one. While it is detailed and entertaining throughout, Master Tailors is at its best when explaining the history of different house and the customers that frequented them. The level of research and factual depth is impressive, but then that isn’t surprising from one so buried in the archives of the Row’s institutions.

It should not be used as a guide to Savile Row today, or the practical choice of where to have a suit made. But the history does inspire you to join the ranks of movie men that frequented Anderson & Sheppard, or the navy men that went to Gieves & Hawkes. Indeed, the most impressive thing about the writing might be that it remains consistently enjoyable, despite the necessity to be structured as two dozen potted histories. One way this is achieved is by dropping in pieces of social context, such as the fact that Idina, Countess of Erroll’s being measured ‘astride’ at Huntsman is a little ironic given her reputation for promiscuity.

This is certainly the best of James Sherwood’s books on Savile Row. It should be purchased if you are planning to buy a suit there and want to build up the excitement; if you have no plans to do so, it could be rather frustrating.

Prince of Wales at Henry Poole: Part 4

This, the fourth part of the series looking at the making of a Henry Poole suit, examines the padding of a chest. It is being done here by apprentice James under the watchful eye of John Dryer.

First, James takes the three parts of the canvassing (canvas, horsehair and demette) and cuts them roughly to shape, chalking it first and then using his shears. That done, he cuts a slice in the top of the canvas and horsehair – around where your collarbone will be on the jacket. The slice is pulled apart slightly, by about the width of a finger, and an extra piece stitched onto the back of it with the sewing machine. This makes the canvas and horsehair slightly convex, bowing out from the chest.

The two slices are cut in slightly different places, so that when they are placed on top of each other no ridge is formed. The demette (the black, spongy cloth here) is then placed underneath and all three basted together. Some baste these pieces together with simple tacks at the corners; others do a couple of straight lines; Poole tends to stitch a rectangle and then one extra line that follows the outside edge.

Then, on to the padding. For James, this is the best part of making a jacket. “If I was a customer, this is the part I would like to see – it shows the work that goes into the suit, and the architecture that will hold it all together for years to come,” he says.

The stitches are around an inch in length and closely packed. Padding styles vary considerably between coatmakers, but it’s fair to say these are denser than those at Anderson & Sheppard but looser than Huntsman – as you’d perhaps expect.

John is particularly complimentary about James’s padding: “When he gets going his work is fantastically fast and accurate. You watch – all those stitches are exactly the same and perfectly placed.” That’s John you can see below, doing some mark stitching on the foreparts of my suit. Mark stitching involves basting lines along the chalk marks on the cloth and then clipping them off, leaving small stitches that the coatmaker can follow later on as the chalk becomes hard to see.

Back with James, his padding starts in horizontal lines running from the centre of the chest upwards. Then he runs vertical lines from the centre downwards. In each case, the key is to stitch away from the centre so you push fullness outwards rather than ending up with it sitting in the middle of the cloth.

Last is the lapel, which uses the sewing machine’s padding stitch. This creates lots of equal but loose stitches that are whipped around a central line of thread. The advantage of using the machine is that it is easy to adjust the tension, which is important in shaping both the lapel and the collar.

Next: trouser making

Previous posts: the cloth, measuring and cutting.